This invention relates generally to electronic balloting or vote-recording systems, and, more particularly, to such systems which also utilize punched cards as permanent ballot records.
Governmental agencies have long sought a reliable and rapid system for recording and tallying the ballots of voters on election day. With increasing population and a seemingly ever-expanding list of offices and issues to be voted upon, an effective and convenient solution has still to be found, in spite of the availability of fast and reliable electronic computers.
Apart from manual counting methods, there are basically three vote-counting techniques presently available: those utilizing punched or otherwise encoded cards, mechanical voting machines, and electronic voting machines. In a punched-card system, each voter records his selections by punching holes, using a hand-held stylus of some kind, in a card which is placed in a specially designed holder so that the hole locations are properly aligned with the possible voter selections, which are printed in a booklet attached to the holder or printed on the card itself. The punched-card form is a convenient one because it is also a standard input medium for electronic computers. Consequently, the cards can be transported to a computer site, and read into a computer system for tallying and printing of the election returns.
However, the punched-card system suffers from a number of serious disadvantages. First, the cards must be handled manually by a number of people in passing from the voters' hands to the computer. This not only introduces an unavoidable security hazard, but also results in a substantial time delay in generating the complete election returns. Furthermore, the cards have to be manually "manicured" to ensure that the punched-out material is completely removed before the cards are passed through card reading machines. Even when all possible care is taken, a small but not insignificant percentage of cards will usually be virtually destroyed by card jams in the reading machines.
Mechanical vote-recording machines are generally more reliable, in the sense that they accurately indicate the voter selections. However, a system utilizing mechanical voting machines at each precinct depends on the accurate transcribing of the machines' tallies, and there is much room for human error in transferring these tallies to a central computer, not to mention the security hazard entailed. Furthermore the mechanical counters register only running tallies, and lack an audit trail for use in the case of a vote recount.
Completely electronic machines appear to be the ideal solution to the problems of mechanical and punched-card systems. It is within the current state of the electronics art to design a voter terminal employing only electrical switches for voter selections, to store and transmit these selections to a central computer over telephone lines or by other means, and to process the voter selections in the computer, all without human intervention. Thus, the problem of manual card-handling, time delays, and security hazards are all avoided by the totally electronic system. One significant problem remains, however.
As in the case of mechanical vote-recording machines, a totally electronic system would provide no permanent, i.e., non-volatile, record of each ballot cast. A recount procedure would not be possible except by rerunning the central computer through its computations, a procedure which would not, of course, detect possible errors introduced in the transmission of the data. Raw data as provided by the voter could not be reproduced, at least not without some intervening electronic processing. Basically, then, the disadvantages of totally electronic balloting systems stem from their lack of reliance on permanent voting records. It seems that the reliability of totally electronic systems is still suspect to some degree, and some form of back-up, incorporating elements of an already proven technique, is necessary if the systems are to be widely accepted.
It will be appreciated from the foregoing that there is definite need in this art for a system incorporating apparatus which provides the speed and reliability of a totally electronic balloting system, but which is conveniently compatible with existing systems, and which gererates permanent records, such as punched cards, encoded with the raw balloting data at each balloting site. The present invention fulfills this need.